.His ouster follows two difficult years in the best job and also merely times after the company's board revealed it was actually investigating him for declared reliable lapses.The Atlanta-based railroad mentioned Shaw had an unacceptable unanimous connection with Norfolk Southern's chief lawful police officer, who was actually also cancelled. Norfolk Southern marketed Main Financial Police officer Smudge George to become the railroad's upcoming CEO.Shaw was leading Norfolk Southern in February 2023 when one of its own trains derailed, spilled poisonous chemicals and caught fire in East Palestine, Ohio, the worst railway disaster in the last many years. Then, activist investor Ancora Holdings attempted to take command of the railroad previously this year as well as fire Shaw.He weathered legislative hearings as well as hard community conferences after the East Palestine derailment, while promising to make Norfolk Southern the "gold standard for security" in the field. He additionally dealt with to convince capitalists not to back the majority of Ancora's panel nominees. 3 of its own nominees performed gain chairs on the railway's board, however that wasn't good enough to provide it control.The derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border caused the country to re-examine railroad protection and led legislators and also regulators to ask for reforms. Yet those propositions have greatly stalled, and the sector has actually produced merely minimal changes considering that the derailment, such as putting up even more trackside sensors to locate overheating bearings like the one that induced the East Palestine crash.The unsatisfactory monetary end results Norfolk Southern delivered after the derailment, integrated with concerns about Shaw's tactic of keeping even more workers accessible in the course of a slump, produced the railway enriched for stress coming from a financier like Ancora. Norfolk Southern's revenues have actually consistently hung back the various other primary railroads that even more aggressively taken on the lean operating version that has actually ended up being the field specification.